Bambi Part 33

"Now, children, let us not trot out the family skeleton. The 'Heavenly Twins' can talk from now until doomsday tolls on the importance or non-importance of mathematics. It's as thrilling as modern warfare when they get started, but I can't afford to let them go, because they get so excited."

"Luncheon am served, Miss Bambi," announced Ardelia.

Bambi led the way, with a sigh of relief. If she could only get through with it, and get the happy family out of the way! Jarvis must be punished for bad behaviour, and she set herself to the task at once. She turned her attention wholly upon Mr. Strong. She laughed and s.h.i.+ned her eyes at him, referring to the dear, old days in the most shameless manner. She fairly caressed him with her voice, and his devotion capped her own.

The Professor ate his lunch oblivious to the comedy, but Jarvis scarcely touched his. Some new, painful thing was at work in him. He resented it every time this man looked at Bambi. He wanted to knock him down, and order her off to her room. Most of all, he was furious with himself for caring. He had the same instinct which possessed him in New York when he rushed to the club to sweep her out of his life, and so save himself. He determined to leave the moment luncheon was over. She must never know what a bad hour she had given him. Poor, ostrich Jarvis, with his head in the sands!

The luncheon was one of the most amusing events in Richard Strong's experience, and as for Bambi, she was at her best. She enjoyed herself utterly, until coffee put a period to Act Two.

XIII

Mr. Strong's visit left its impress on all three members of the household. The Professor referred to him as the man with the thirteen sisters, and wished him reinvited to the house. Bambi treasured the day he spent with her as a turning point in her life. Surely new vistas opened up to her as a result of his coming. But to Jarvis the memory of the day was extremely painful. He took Bambi's punishment very seriously. He conceived Strong to be a former lover whom she welcomed back with affectionate ardour. He knew enough of her odd personality to be totally in the dark as to what she would do if she found herself suddenly in love with Strong. The main difficulty was, however, that he cared what she did--he, Jarvis, the free man! He realized that this was a flag of danger, and he answered the warning by sedulously avoiding Bambi for the next few days. She was too busy with the plans for the book to notice, although she caught him looking at her once or twice in a strange, speculative way. Their peace was broken, however, a few days after Mr. Strong's famous visit by a letter from the Belasco office, accompanied by the play. Mr. Belasco regretted that the play was not just what he wanted. It had some excellent points, etc., but as he had already arranged for so many productions during the coming season, he felt he could not take on anything more at present. He would be glad to read anything Mr. Jocelyn might submit. Jarvis handed it on to Bambi.

"As I told you," he remarked.

"It never got to Belasco," said Bambi, confidently. "If it had, he would have seen its possibilities."

"Is something the matter?" inquired the Professor.

"Belasco has refused Jarvis's play."

"So. He didn't like that abominable woman any better than I did."

"She is not abominable!" from Jarvis.

"Be quiet, you two, and let me think."

"If you would learn concentration you would not need quiet in which to think," protested her parent.

"Oh, if I would learn to be a camel I wouldn't need a hump," returned Bambi, shortly.

"I don't think a hump would be becoming to you," mused the Professor, turning back to his book.

"We'll send it to Parke, Jarvis."

"What's the use?"

"Don't be silly. Every manager in New York shall see that play before we stop. We will send it to his wife. Maybe she will read it."

"Do as you like about it," he answered, with superb impersonality.

She took his advice and got it off at once, addressed to the actress. In a week came a letter in reply saying that Miss Harper would like to talk to Mr. Jocelyn about the play, and making an appointment at her house two days later.

This letter threw them into great excitement. Jarvis protested, first, that he could not be interrupted at his present work, which interested him. Bambi pooh-poohed that excuse. Then he said he had never talked to an actress, and he had heard they were a fussy lot. She would probably want him to change the play; as he would not do that, there was no use seeing the woman. Bambi informed him that if Miss Harper would get the play produced, it would pay Jarvis to do exactly what she wanted done.

Then he protested he hated New York. He didn't want to go back there.

Bambi finally lost her temper.

"If you are going to act like a balky horse, I give you up. Until you get started, you will have to do a great many things you will not like, but if I were a man, I would never let any obstacles down me."

"When can I get a train?" meekly.

"You can take the same train we took before, to-morrow morning."

A great light broke for Jarvis.

"I can't go. I haven't any money."

"I have. I'll lend it to you."

"I must owe you thousands now."

"Not quite. We can do this all right."

"Have you got it all down?"

"In the Black Maria," she nodded.

So the long and the short of it was that Jarvis went off to New York again. No martyr ever approached the stake with a more saddened visage than he turned upon Bambi as the train pulled out. She waved her hand at him, smiling pleasantly, but he was sorrowful to the last glimpse.

"Poor old baby!" she laughed. "He shall stay in New York a while. He is getting too dependent on mamma."

She really welcomed his absence. It gave her so much more time for her own work, which absorbed and delighted her. She had never known any sensation so pleasurable as that sense of adventure with which, each morning, she went to work. First, she patted the ma.n.u.script pile, which grew so amazingly fast. Then she filled her fountain pen and looked off over the treetops, beyond her window, until, like Peter Pan, she slipped off into another world, the Land of Make Believe, a country she had discovered for herself and peopled with human beings to suit her own taste. To be sure, heir story concerned itself mainly with herself, Jarvis, and the Professor, but only the traits that made them individual, that made them "they," were selected, and the experiences she took them through were entirely of her own making. It was such fun to make them real by the power of words; to make many people know them and love them, or condemn them, as the case might be. In fact, creation was absorbing.

"It's very quiet around here since Jarvis left," commented the Professor a few days later.

"I never thought Jarvis was noisy."

"Well, he's like distant thunder."

"And heat lightning," laughed Bambi.

"Do you happen to miss him?"

"Me? Oh, not at all. Do you?"

"It always frets me to have things mislaid that I am used to seeing around. When you change the furnis.h.i.+ngs about, it upsets me."

"Do you look upon Jarvis as furniture?" she teased him.

"I look upon him as an anomaly."

"How so?"

"William Morris said, 'You should never have anything in your house which you do not know to be useful, and believe to be beautiful.'"

"I think Jarvis is beautiful."